Description of Book
James McGregor is a part-time
religious columnist and a graduate minister of the Christian Church.
However, he has refused to proceed to ordination because of the conservative
dogmatism of his church. His professional life is at a standstill
and he has lost his original sense of call to the ministry as his
life’s work.
When his editor gives him
an assignment to find a common reality behind the beliefs of the world’s
great religious traditions, he re-enters the University post-graduate
environment and is made to face his fears and reexamine his beliefs
and prejudices.
His ‘holy quest’,
as his friend calls it, leads him beyond the boundaries of traditional
church doctrines to the limits of contemporary biblical scholarship.
Helped all the way by his ‘support group’, he wrestles with
the age-old, and hitherto unsolved, problem of the two apparently
irreconcilable understandings of the divine in world religions - the
‘western’ theistic and the ‘eastern’ mystical.
After a revelation during a feverish dream he discovers a radical
new theory that bridges the gap between the two types of spirituality
and reconciles the personal and impersonal understandings.
As his weekly articles
become more and more open and tolerant of other religions, he and
his wife Mary are subjected to telephone abuse and death threats from
ultra conservative elements in one of the city churches.
Nevertheless, he is encouraged
by his wife and friends to go public with his theory and his on-air
radio interview is successful, his article is accepted for publication
and he is invited to become part of the team at a big city parish.
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